The idea is from a film that came out in the 90’s. Its a seminal piece of cinematic genius. Its follows a group of hackers that live in NYC and their subsequent pitfalls in their line of work. the visuals for when these teens are hacking are incredible, highly inaccurate but nonetheless a glimpse on how Hollywood perceived this new technological world.
I wanted to make a animated graphic that encompassed the visuals from the film. So I picked one of the main characters (Dade) computer as the vehicle for the visuals. Its called a “CompaqPortable”. Which was a early iteration of the modern day laptop. Its basically a mini desktop computer with a handle on it. Probably weighed a ton, especially when you are rollerblading through the streets of NYC like they are constantly throughout the film.
There is image of a smiley face from the movie that i found iconic, its a visual from one of the viruses they dispatch in the last act of the film to battle against their main adversary. Its akin to that yellow smilely face you used to see as apart of Walmart’s branding and in the rave subculture back in the day, but with a eyepatch.
I used a few visuals from the movie and pulled a key song from the sound track to put over the animation while it played. There is some wild concepts where they show the “inside” of a computer that I wanted to put in there.
I used After Effects to achieve this project. I felt it was the best program to get everything running smoothly versus using PS to make a gif animation. One thing I did find a bit frustrating is that no matter how I exported my file. I couldn’t get the background to stay transparent via EyeJack. I tried exporting through different settings to make the background stayed in “alpha” but to no avail.
I had fun making this thing. Not sure if mine would be considered a poster. But nonetheless I made what i made.
“Hack the planet”